TRANSCRIPT

NARRATIONGlobal meat production has jumped twenty per cent in the last decade, putting enormous pressure on the supply of livestock.

Dr Jan de WiltWe have to feed the world, nine billion people in, in a few decades.

NARRATIONAs countries like India and China expand economically, they adopt western luxuries like eating red meat for dinner.

Prof Mark PostI don't think with the current production we can actually meet that demand. Because right now, we are already using seventy per cent of our arable land for livestock.

NARRATIONFinding ways to cope with the demand for our insatiable appetite has been tough. Here I explore the science behind what could be the future of meat production.

Dr Maryanne DemasiI've come to the Netherlands to meet a professor who's attempting to make the world's first laboratory burger.

Hi Mark, how are you?

Prof Mark PostHi, good, how are you?

Dr Maryanne DemasiThese look good. Are these your experiments?

Prof Mark PostAh, no they're not. These are just regular burgers. Our experiment is going to end up like this.

NARRATIONProfessor Mark Post has been growing meat in his laboratory, and he hopes it will end up looking just like this.

Dr Maryanne DemasiWhat gave you the idea of making burgers in the laboratory?

Prof Mark PostWell we need alternatives for current meat production through livestock. In the lab we can recreate this process, and with the same resources, make double the amount of meat. So that would be a solution to that problem.

Dr Maryanne DemasiHow do you think consumers will take it?

Prof Mark PostWell, if the, if the eventual product is going to look and taste exactly the same, I think they will love it.

Dr Maryanne DemasiVery tasty.

NARRATIONWell these burgers sure tasted great, but I was keen to see Mark's prototypes in the lab. From a tiny biopsy which has been removed from a cow's butt cheek, they tease out the stem cells, and bathe them in a solution full of nutrients.

Prof Mark PostSo we can expand them, and they can double, theoretically up to fifty times, which is a heck of a lot. You can make thousands and thousands of kilos of meat from one stem cell.

NARRATIONSeveral weeks later, the results are amazing.

Prof Mark PostWe see muscle cells here that are aligned, and that actually start to contract spontaneously, after a couple of weeks.

Prof Mark PostRight, because it's still very moist. There is still a lot of water in it. And of course if we train this, then it will become more firm.

Dr Maryanne DemasiSo when you say 'train', you mean give it a workout, like a muscle?

Prof Mark PostYeah, exercise the muscle, let, let them contract. You see they spontaneously contract, but we can improve that by giving them electrical pulses, and then they contract more vigorously, and therefore more protein production.

NARRATIONTwo bits of Velcro are used to tether the strip of muscle, and with the help of an electrical stimulus, the cells are practically bench-pressing. Mark's team is trying to bulk up the muscle cells, so they contain about ninety-five per cent protein, just like human muscles.

Prof Mark PostThe muscle cells that we have right now in the lab contain about seventy to eighty per cent protein. Now mind you, processed meat contains, on average, less than forty per cent animal proteins. So we are basically already there.

Dr Maryanne DemasiSo technically, you could eat this.

Prof Mark PostYes.

Dr Maryanne DemasiHave you?

Prof Mark PostAh no, I haven't, no.

NARRATIONAnd I don't blame him. It looks more like something I'd find in a dirty tissue. To make it more like the real deal, Mark is adding myoglobin. It's a protein which gives the meat a pinkish hue. He's also engineering fat cells to give it the right texture.

Dr Maryanne DemasiIt's going to take around three thousand of these little muscle strips to complete an entire hamburger. And the cost? Three hundred thousand dollars.

NARRATIONMark's burger will take a few months to complete, but it'll be some time before the burgers are made in mass production. And many believe we can't afford to wait.

Dr Maryanne DemasiThat's why some experts say the future of farming will go from this … to this. I'm in a multi-storey apartment complex for animals. Here in the Netherlands, a shortage of land means farming can't move out, so it's got to move up.

NARRATIONHigh-rise farming is the next frontier. Jan de Wilt is behind the push to switch from farming in wide open spaces to apartment living for animals.

Dr Maryanne DemasiSo this is the next level up?

Dr Jan de WiltYeah, it's really high, yeah?

Dr Maryanne DemasiYeah.

Dr Jan de WiltWith no lifts here.

Dr Maryanne DemasiNo lift to the penthouse.

Dr Jan de WiltNo, no.

NARRATIONBehind these apartment doors live over seven thousand pigs.

Dr Jan de WiltSo that's quite a lot.

Dr Maryanne DemasiYeah.

Dr Jan de WiltIt's quite a big farm already. And I think in the future we will have six, seven, eight, ten storey farms.

Dr Maryanne DemasiWow.

Dr Jan de WiltSo even housing up to a hundred thousand pigs.

Dr Maryanne DemasiPeople are worried about the pigs' welfare. I mean, is this cruelty to animals or not?

Dr Jan de WiltThere is no connection between large-scale farming and a bad animal welfare. What we plan to do is more open space, also for the pigs, so that you have a different environment for sleeping, for moving about, for eating. And that will look more animal-friendly, like it is now.

Dr Maryanne DemasiAre you concerned about the spread of diseases in such confined spaces?

Dr Jan de WiltWe take every measure to prevent disease outbreaks, and when it happens we will see that it is contained within the unit, so not spread to the environment and to people living outside.

NARRATIONAnd that's the advantage of having animals in enclosed spaces. Twelve years ago an outbreak of swine fever spread across the region, and resulted in the slaughter of over eight million pigs. They call these facilities 'agroparks'. The plan is to have a closed-circuit system, where potatoes feed the pigs, their manure is reprocessed into fertiliser and salmon feed, and the animals' body heat is used to warm the rooftop greenhouse.

Dr Jan de WiltSo nothing is wasted. And that's very important, also for the environment, also for the CO2 emissions, and that's why we work on this concept. We believe in it for the future.

NARRATIONIn this small Belgian estate on the Dutch border, lives Wim Claessen, a traditional farmer of wagyu beef. He says agroparks are a poor substitute for quality meat.

Wim ClaessenI think it's a crazy idea. The consumer is going to a supermarket and he wants to buy a piece of meat, because he remembers that the last time he had meat, it was kind of a nice culinary experience. So he wants to have a culinary experience, not just feeding himself with protein.

Wim ClaessenI think we should eat less meat, and pay a little bit more for it. But you don't need to eat quarter of a kilogram every day.

Dr Maryanne DemasiI think it will be a challenge to change people's behaviours.

Wim ClaessenYes, it is, yes. Sometimes you have to.

Dr Jan de WiltWell it's not possible to feed nine billion people with that kind of romantic picture. I am not saying agroparks are the solution and they will be everywhere in the world. So you have to think of other concepts.

Prof Mark PostSuppose twenty years from now we have products in the supermarket, one is grown in the lab and the other is grown in an animal. I think it will become very readily accepted.

NARRATIONI, for one, enjoy a great steak. And if it looks and tastes like real meat, and it's better for the environment, then why not give it a go?

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YOUR COMMENTS

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Michael - 12 Apr 2012 10:46:05am

Oh how people have forgotten the cave people and what they ate to survive. A little less meat each day is of course the way to go. We as a modern society should spread out the fat of the land and enjoy our meat but not 250 gramms per day.

MIchael Levin - 10 Apr 2012 6:30:25am

The racism and violence in each person featuring in this article is embarrassing and shameful.

A disgrace.Michael.

James Larkin - 09 Apr 2012 4:55:22pm

What a disgusting view of factory farming is depicted here with it building high level factories and apartments for animals. Surely animals have suffered enough from factory farming atrocities.I was also dismayed that the report displayed no compassion for the poor farm animals.

Hopefully the lab meat will soon make the cruelty and slaughter of factory farming a thing of the past.

Jenny - 09 Apr 2012 2:28:46pm

Be a lot easier for people to simply stop eating meat or at least change their ways and eat a lot less, it is not even good for you. Pig manure becomes salmon feed !! what a worry and keeping animals in that way is an animal welfare issue, that is no life for a pig or any animal. Very sad.

Rosie Davis - 08 Apr 2012 3:10:14pm

Prof; Mark Post sneezed & then he got carried away, boredom & enthusiasm both, will do that for you.As for the pigs raised indoors (couch potato bacon).Aren't animals supposed to get a reasonable outdoorsy life so that the meat on the plate is not riddled with toxins from stressed, distressed & confused animals with atrophied muscles ?Great Program.R.D.

Pythinia - 06 Apr 2012 10:14:07am

Dr Mary Demasi I found your last remark quite chilling, obviously cruelty to animals is the last on your list.

As long as you can eat what you like when you like and how you like without a care for how abysmally animals are treated - as long as your human needs are taken care of.

Shame on you.

Moderator: Dr Maryanne Demasi did pose the cruelty to animal question in her report, and her concluding remark backs the lab burger.

Helen - 05 Apr 2012 8:26:29pm

Good story - thank you. But so many stories that comment on "feeding the future population" just comment on the production side. We are wasting tonnes and tonnes of food every year. Do we really need to focus on how to "produce more", or can't we put more of the research dollars into how to waste less, and distribute it to those who need it? I'd love Catalyst to make this comment, next time there is a "food production scarcity" story.Thanks